Empowering people to manage their own money with a one-off cash payment could have an enduring impact on homelessness, if the “beautifully surprising” results of a Canadian initiative are anything to go by. The New Leaf Project, a scheme led by Vancouver-based Foundations for Social Change (FSC) saw a one-off payment of CAD7,500 (around $5,600) given to 50 homeless adults, compared to a control group of 65 homeless people who did not receive any money. The initiative, which began in 2018 and was...
MPP alumnus Rodolpho Zannin Feijó joined the first online edition of the Maastricht University Alumni Week last month as a guest speaker from his home city of Curitiba in Brazil. During a lively conversation with current and prospective students, he shared his experience as head of the city’s International Affairs Office and looked back on his Master’s studies in Maastricht. Here are six highlights from the conversation. A double-degree from United Nations University and Maastricht University ha...
This week our new director Bartel Van de Walle met regional governor Theo Bovens, ahead of UN Day on 24 October 2020. The two leaders discussed the state of the province and the planet, how to ensure young people are listened to and empowered, and how our staff and fellows are ambassadors for the UN. Below is a transcription of their discussion, lightly edited for clarity. What does 75 years of the United Nations mean for you? Bartel Van de Walle: First of all, the UN is already 75! I think that...
The current pandemic is a fork in the road, highlighting the need for more sustainable economies and more resilient societies – a fact reflected in pledges made by the European Commission, the G20 group of nations, and various national governments to ‘build back something better’. In the policy brief below, we explain how a Bauhaus initiative can help build socially stronger and fairer societies when combined with a low-carbon economy. We were inspired by the plea for ‘a new European Bauhaus for...
No matter how much we like to think of ourselves as informed consumers, the majority of us do not fully understand the complexity of the arrangements needed to get even the most basic commodities to our tables safely, reliably and with any luck, tastily. The journey of the humble cornflake from corn seed to the breakfast table requires a tangled web of research, forecasting, analysis, logistics, contracts and legal compliance. Yet for some 820 million people around the world, that complexity int...
UNICEF Kyrgyzstan has just released two new reports co-authored by Franziska Gassmann and Eszter Timar: a multidimensional poverty assessment for the Kyrgyz Republic, and a position paper on social assistance for poor families with children. The first report proposes a national multidimensional poverty index (MPI) tailored specifically to the Kyrgyz Republic. It incorporates indicators related to health, education, food security, living conditions and monetary poverty. Such a measure provides a ...
While the rise of populist politicians in the Europe and the US gets a lot of attention from the media and researchers alike, the drivers of the populism taking hold in emerging and developing economies still receives relatively little scrutiny. In a new working paper we provide new evidence tracing the rise of populism in Brazil – through both the victory of presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2002 and Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 – to regional economic shocks caused by a process of trade liberal...
A new report out from the International Labour Organization features contributions from five researchers at UNU-MERIT. Along with the ILO’s youth employment specialist Drew Gardiner, Micheline Goedhuys collaborated with Alison Cathles, Chen Gong, Michelle González Amador and Eleonora Nillesen. The report begins with two main questions: How can young people around the world – even the most marginalised – navigate the fast-moving currents of modern labour markets? How can UN agencies, nation...
I was eight years old when I learned that ‘we’ are guests in Syria, the country where I spent 34 years of my life before I moved to Europe and became a recognised citizen of the Netherlands. The story traces back to the year 1948, when both my grandparents were forcibly eradicated from their home in Wadi Salib, a neighbourhood in the heart of Haifa city in Palestine, my country of origin. At the time, my grandparents, like other Palestinians, were told that it was a temporary situation, and that...
Is it possible for politics and science to influence one another yet remain separate? To what extent should scientists be made accountable for the research that informs policy? What is the appropriate apparatus to mediate these issues? And what is the role of the media in shaping the public’s understanding and expectations of the links between science and policymaking? These were a few of the questions tackled in a Chatham House webinar on 11 September 2020, featuring Sir David King, former Chie...